. >> holiday red there, rachel. i will begin with you. is there any realistic timetable where a deal gets done beforian 1? look at the calendar. >> there's a realistic timetable but not an optimistic timetable. not a lot of holiday cheer going on in the nation's capital. after the stunning is heback speaker boehner suffered this week in the house where he could not get his own plan through. had to pull it and because he didn't have the votes. we saw president obama acknowledge yesterday before leaving for his vacation that the deal would -- would dramatically narrow. the parameters of a deal, scope of any possible deal, much smaller than we were looking at even a week ago. he said he would still be open to the big deal but the reality is we are running out of days hering and not a lot of progress is being made. quite the opposite. >> david, are republicans actually hoping to go over the fiscal cliff because then any vote on taxes technically would be to cut them and could go forward without saying we cut taxes? >> that's a good point. inn